


all the shoulders i wish to cry on

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Series: o blessed gabriel, intercede for us [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Akuze, Angst, F/M, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), Survivor Guilt, drinking alcohol in unsafe volumes, the author craves the akuze angst and now we are here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 15:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16411403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: Shepard is always okay, because she has decided to always be okay--Garrus has figured out that much all on his own.  After finding the bodies of half a dozen Marines baited into getting killed by a thresher maw on Edolus, though, she's starting to fray at the edges.Or, Garrus learns slightly more than he bargained for about Akuze.





	all the shoulders i wish to cry on

**Author's Note:**

> ...we all knew what I was going to write the SECOND I started playing Mass Effect. I don't have to defend myself to you.
> 
> I will say, though, that this is my first ME fic and I'm literally not even done with the first game and therefore have read exactly zero fic, so I'm Doing My Best with characterization and universe building but may have missed the mark. Also I did enough research that I'm pretty sure we know exactly fucking nothing about Akuze and I just made some shit up, but if I'm wrong...I probably won't change it, this is just an apology.
> 
> The title is from Endgame by Rise Against.

Joker brings Normandy into dock like a dream, so smooth that the crew doesn’t even feel the deceleration except as a gentle pull at their bones, the hull-shivering impact of the docking clamp almost a surprise.  Garrus hasn’t talked to the man much—Joker is prickly, to put it mildly, even on Commander Shepard’s mix-and-match ship of half wide-eyed and excitable explorers, half short-tempered assholes—but everyone on board and probably more than a few people ground-side know how smug Joker is about his landings.  With reason.  Safely docking something with the kick of Normandy’s engine is a nightmare scenario that Garrus feels completely comfortable pawning off on someone else.

Under normal circumstances, there are cheers when Joker brings them in to the Citadel, the scant crew hollering and laughing about their plans for shore leave.  The galaxy is at stake, sure.  No one’s planning elaborate trips or week-long benders.  But being at the great space station for even just a few hours is a relief from Normandy’s cramped corners; the chance to sleep in a real bed that’s all yours for as long as you’re paying for it a gift.  Everyone, even the sourest of them, gets excited.

Normally.

This has been their shortest time away from the Citadel to date.  Normally, Shepard is driven, with an eye for efficiency that borders on mania—she keeps meticulous mental lists of every task set to her and seems to have a natural grasp of how many missions she can cram into the limited span of time before her crew gets space-crazy.  She’s not a slave driver, of course.  She’s an easy commanding officer to work for, really, by everyone’s standards, with a strict stance that, as long as everyone does their job and does it well, she couldn’t give a fuck about anything else if she tried.  But still.  Shepard has things to do, and approaches them like an avalanche: learn to keep up, or else get crushed by the sheer force of her momentum.  Four planet-side missions in a row is about what they’ve learned to expect.

This time, they went to exactly one.

“This is Commander Shepard,” her voice says over the comm system, steady and flat.  “We’ve made dock at the Citadel.  We are shipping out again at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow.  Until then, you are relieved of duty unless you have specific tasks previously indicated by your direct superior.  Please enjoy your shore leave.”

It’s the same spiel she delivers every time they arrive to the Citadel, but the tone—yeah, the tone worries Garrus just a little.  It’s why he’s already on the bridge, politely ignoring the confused glances directed at him and fully equipped for trouble, rather than shore leave.  Not too confused, though.  Any ship’s crew is responsive to the temper of the CO, more so when the CO is as personable as Shepard, and no one’s so much as raised their voice since they left orbit on Edolus.  It’s been a ghost ship, more or less, with Shepard as the vengeful wraith haunting the cargo bay.

Shepard is geared up, too, when she strides toward the airlock with Williams on her heels.  Williams looks baffled, baffled enough to grant even Garrus a quick, communicative glance.  Shepard isn’t even bothering to try to look collected—she looks like a soldier about to do murder, her mouth pressed thin and twisted into something like a close-mouthed snarl.

“Commander Shepard,” Garrus says politely, like he’s not directly in her path to the airlock.  He sees the technician nearest to him shoot a frankly alarmed look at him.  The man probably thinks Garrus is taking his life in his hands, getting in Shepard’s way when she has that look on her face.  It’s a concern that has occurred to Garrus, and reoccurs to him in vivid detail when Shepard turns those eyes on him.

Turian eyes don’t come in green.  He found Shepard’s a little creepy at first, to be honest—so light and clear and piercing.  Not like she was just looking, more like she was _scanning_ you every time she turned the full force of her stare in your direction, as strong and purifying as a UV beam.  He’s learned to bear up under the stare, though, and doesn’t even fidget when she glares at him.

“Garrus,” she says.  “Can I help you?”

“No, Commander,” he says.  “I’m coming with you.”

It softens something in that glacial gaze, and her lips untwist a little.  Shepard usually does ‘unreadable Spectre’ like it’s her life’s work—she drops the mask sometimes on Normandy, but generally not when she’s upset.  Not like this. 

Garrus has a sudden memory of speaking with her after Xawin, about thresher maws.  About how the Mako had caught fire, and how Tali had been desperately trying to patch it up while Shepard kept shooting, eyes cold and hands sure as she manned the Mako’s cannon and main gun.  About whether it was possible that Shepard had a little bit of an obsession.

About whether Shepard was _okay_.

He’d figured out after Ontarom—after Toombs, Shepard’s very own ghost haunting Normandy as they brought him back to the Citadel for care—that Shepard, the most efficient and competent and intelligent being he’d ever met, was essentially only ever okay because she had decided to be.  She turned that merciless willpower on herself every day and decided to be as okay as she needed to be to get the job done.

Now, Shepard looks like she’s finally about reached the end of her rope.

She takes a long breath through her nose and holds it for a moment before she nods crisply and says, “Thank you, Garrus.  I thought Ashley might be a good person to provide Kahoku some…”  There’s a pause as Shepard visibly gropes for the right words.  “Some support, from the other side of things, if necessary,” Shepard finally finishes. 

“Sounds good,” Garrus says, and steps aside with a little gesture of _after you_ that’s shockingly universal in most species with hands.  He falls in behind her right shoulder, and Williams only bristles at him a little, which is progress, probably.

Shepard likes the Citadel—she’s not shy about liking it, either, taking her time walking the Presidium so that she can watch the fountains, the unconscious slight frown on her lips easing a little as she explores the Wards.  Today, she scowls three C-Sec guards out of her path and snarls down a reporter, and then hits the wide, polished pathways at a punishing run.  Williams, who isn’t out of shape herself, is panting by the time Shepard slams a fist down on the button to summon the elevator into the Tower, and Garrus wonders if this is the kind of rage that drives Shepard into her trademark suicide attacks.

All of it, the scowl and the glare and the vibration in the very air of sheer _wrath_ , drains away as soon as they see Kahoku, leaning against the railing and still trying to make an appointment to see someone.  What’s left is an expression that even Garrus’ fairly extensive experience with beings of all kinds can’t identify.  It looks raw, whatever it is, like a fresh wound bleeding.

“Did you find my marines?” Kahoku asks, and Shepard looks like she’s been shot.

“I’m not sure how to tell you this,” she says, holding out her hands helplessly, and tells him, still wearing that expression of a soldier dying slow.

Kahoku looks shaken at the end of it—deeply shaken, almost shattered.  Shepard’s voice is still steady when she says, “I’m so sorry, Admiral.”

“You did all you could,” Kahoku says automatically.  “I know—I know that you’ve faced thresher maws before, Commander,” he continues, looking hesitant.  It’s more polite than most people who insist on bringing up Akuze, really.  Garrus has started getting the urge to gently, civilly, honorably knock people out with the butt of his gun when they bring up Akuze to Shepard’s face, and he knows he’s not the only one.

“I have,” Shepard says.  Her face is still almost agonized, but her voice is perfectly smooth.  “More than once.”

“Did they—did my soldiers even have a chance?”

Shepard pauses for just a moment, and lets out a breath that shakes like the start of a laugh.  “No, Admiral.  No, they didn’t.  It was probably very quick.  They didn’t even have a chance to step away from the distress beacon.”

Kahoku nods, slowly.  “In your experience—did they suffer?”

“Less than some,” is Shepard’s only response.  Garrus wonders if the rest of that thought is _more than others_.

For a moment, it’s the four of them, standing in the beautiful anteroom of the Citadel Tower and looking at each other and held still in the echo of Shepard’s words.  Then Shepard seems to find a fresh source of that endless willpower and draws herself up, squares her shoulders like a good marine, raises her chin so that the light falls across her clear eyes and the scar there.  Garrus wonders, sometimes, if the Council realizes how much power they put in the hands of Gabriel Shepard, the first human Spectre and easily as formidable as any star going supernova, when they gave her the authority to enforce her sense of justice.  He hopes they don’t figure it out until well after they’re in too deep to take it back.

“Admiral,” Shepard says.  “If there’s anything I or any of my crew can do to help you do right by your men, I’m at your disposal.  All you need to do is ask.”

Kahoku smiles at her.  It’s twisted and sad but it’s a smile, and when he salutes her, Shepard, for once, snaps her heels together and puts forward a salute as pretty as any military instructor could ask for.

“I appreciate the offer, Commander Shepard,” Kahoku says.  “It’s an honor to have someone like you at my disposal.”

Shepard nods, and turns to go.

Outside the Tower, Shepard walks to the rail overlooking the lake running down the center of the Presidium and grips it in both hands, her arms locked straight and her shoulders tight.  Garrus and Williams hang back and glance at each other, a rare moment of perfect agreement— _you say something first_ , both of them are thinking. 

It’s several minutes before Williams clears her throat and drifts up on Shepard’s left, until she’s just in visual range.  Garrus doesn’t move from Shepard’s right shoulder, fixing a nearby curious salarian with a stare that probably isn’t as menacing as the commander’s best murderous glare but sends the stranger on their way without trouble.  Shepard complains when she has to leave Garrus behind, says that she misses having a sniper on her back, so he isn’t in a rush to move anywhere—this is the Presidium, harmless and almost dull, but he has Shepard’s back and she seems like she might need that, at the moment.  Williams can do the talking.

“Skipper?” Williams asks quietly.  “Are you, uh.  Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Chief,” Shepard says, her voice flat.  She doesn’t look up, her red hair falling around her face and shielding her expression.  “You two get on with whatever you were hoping to do with a few hours’ shore leave.”

Williams looks over Shepard’s shoulder at Garrus as if at a loss.  “I—are you headed back to Normandy, Shepard?”

“No,” Shepard says.  “I’ll stay on the Citadel tonight.  I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”  For a moment, Shepard’s grip on the railing tightens until something creaks—her _gloves_ , the sturdy armored gauntlets, Garrus realizes, protesting under the strain she’s putting on them.  Then Shepard straightens up, shrugs it all off, and turns to look at them both.  The unreadable Spectre, back on duty, except for that fractured look in the depths of those glacier-green eyes.  “You have the night off,” Shepard says in a reasonable imitation of her usual good-natured manner.  “Hell, go spend a few hours getting a lap dance or gamble away all your money, have some fun.”

“Shepard,” Garrus says finally.  “Are you sure you’re holding up?”

She looks at him for a moment and—almost cracks, he thinks.  It’s not really a visible thing, it’s just a feeling in the air as she hesitates.

Then she turns away from them and her voice is almost cold when she says, “You’re dismissed.  I’ll see you tomorrow morning, oh-eight-hundred.  Don’t be late, we’ve got a lead on Saren to run down.”

Williams shoots Garrus a helpless look and says reluctantly, “Sure thing, skipper.”

“Call your sisters,” Shepard says without looking back, emotionless.  “You’ll be able to sync a vid call from the Citadel, they’ll be glad to see your face in real time.  Hopefully you’ll be able to go home for a while soon.”

“Yes, sir,” Williams agrees.  She lingers for another moment, but Shepard doesn’t seem inclined to say anything else, and Williams finally drifts away, unsure like Garrus has never really seen her.  Normandy doesn’t have space for uncertainty.  It’s a luxury they’re not afforded.  And maybe she’s not that unsure, because Williams throws him another look as she retreats, sharp and still strangely in tune with his own thoughts, and Garrus nods to her, straightening to his full height and feeling a rush of cold adrenaline like he’s about to go into battle.

There’s a pause after Williams leaves, a lingering moment of tension as Garrus stands quietly behind Shepard’s shoulder and she looks out, unseeing, over the Presidium lake.  Passersby eddy around him like water around a rock, taking a good few steps away from the armed turian with an unfriendly look to his stance, and it provides a clear bubble of space around Shepard.  She could probably generate it herself—Garrus has seen her be accosted on purpose before, but he’s never once seen someone bump into Shepard while walking by, warned off by the silent _I could make you regret it_ in every expression.  Still, it makes him feel like he’s doing something.  Garrus can feel the tension humming in the column of his spine, shivering through his chest like a beat in a drum, and it finally breaks like a wave when Shepard, still motionless, speaks again.

“I gave you an order, Vakarian,” she says, almost soft.  Shepard is only ever quiet and soft when there are guns and civilians in the same room, or when she’s in a mood to rip someone’s throat out with her teeth.  He’s pretty sure this is the former, but he can’t see the gun and that’s not helping the chilly feeling of anticipation settling into his bones. 

“You did,” Garrus admits, and tries not to scan the nearby rooftops too obviously.  It’s pointless, aimless.  This is the Presidium.  His hands still miss the weight of his gun, the beautiful rifle that Shepard pressed into his hands with a smug smile after sailing into C-Sec to rummage through their top-of-the-line requisitions.  Garrus tries to put some humor into his voice and says, “If you want to haul me up for insubordination, I’m sure no one will be surprised.  It’s not exactly the first order I’ve ignored.”

That gets a response, Shepard stirring like she’s waking up from a long sleep.  “Call it a friendly request, then.  Get lost, enjoy yourself.”

“I am enjoying myself,” Garrus says.  It’s—mostly not untrue, even though it’s also blatantly false.  He’s not enjoying himself, not right now, because he’s more than slightly alarmed by Shepard’s apparent determination to chase him off, but he’s also pretty sure that he’ll be just as stressed if he lets her.  And he does enjoy her company, usually, when he’s not keeping an eye on her for signs of self-destruction.

Shepard scoffs at him, not her usual wry snort of laughter but harsher, a little cracked.  “You’re a shit liar, Garrus.”

“Yes, sir,” he says in a dry imitation of good form.  “Really, Commander,” Garrus goes on more seriously, taking a small step to put himself more fully in her field of vision, bowing his head slightly to put them closer to the same height.  “I don’t have anything I’m looking to get done tonight and—I’m a little concerned that you’re going to do something stupid.”

“I don’t do stupid stuff,” Shepard lies outright.  Garrus makes an involuntary noise that the translator can’t handle, a low creaking sound in the back of his throat that he hopes conveys his disbelief that Shepard would say that to his face.  She blinks twice and finally turns to look at him.  “I don’t do stupid stuff in the Citadel,” she amends.

“I have it on _extremely_ good authority that you shouted at the Council when they made you a Spectre, and I have personally watched you shoot a man in the Lower Markets.”

The ghostly smile on her lips feels harder won than any battle they’ve faced since he first boarded Normandy. 

“Those were both rational decisions at the time.”

“One argument with the Council might be a rational decision,” he says, taking another step to join her at the railing.  With his own elbows braced on the metal, he’s bent down far enough to be almost on eye level with her.  “You’re well into stupid territory at this point.”

“Maybe so,” Shepard says, her eyes drifting away from him, already distracted again by her own thoughts.  Then she shakes herself out of it and focuses on him properly, lips twisted crookedly into something that’s halfway between a scowl and a resigned smile.  Human faces are so mobile, so easy to read even by someone with no frame of reference—no wonder half the galaxy underestimates them.  Even Shepard comes across as childlike and unguarded, her mouth and eyes and even the muscles in her jaw and chin telling the world what she feels unless she’s closed her face down into the mask of a good soldier.  It’s hardly the face of a species that, immediately upon having discovered space flight, opted to pick a fight with the most powerful alliance in their galactic neighborhood.

Garrus is fairly sure he’s in the minority, but he figures that anything that bullheaded and stupid and loyal has probably earned a place on the Council.

 “Shepard,” Garrus says.  “I’m not going back to the ship.”

“Yeah,” Shepard sighs.  “That sounds about right.  Come on, Chora’s Den lets me drink for free.”

 * * *

The room they’re shown into in Chora’s Den is evidently supposed to be for private dances, but it’s empty, small and close and more closed-off than Garrus expected.  Shepard exchanges a brief word with the curvy asari who escorted them in, and three minutes later she comes back with a bottle of good turian brandy in one hand and a bottle of something Terran that smells like paint thinner and makes Garrus blink in surprise.  Turian brandy is strong, with a handsome kick, but it tastes good.  He’s pretty sure that whatever the commander is pouring into her own cup must taste only slightly better than the bleach solution the quartermaster uses to get stubborn blood off armor.

Shepard pours a healthy portion of whatever it is down her throat like water, and Garrus watches with a feeling like serene horror as she refills her tumbler.

“What is that?” he asks at last, drinking more slowly from his own glass.  They’re seated at a round table barely a meter across, and the red-white lighting adds a strange glow to Shepard’s green eyes as she looks at him, the heavy pulse of the music in the other room loud enough to shudder through the walls and offer them a reasonable assurance of privacy if they wanted to talk.

“Gin,” Shepard says.  “Shitty gin.  It’s like—fifty percent alcohol,” she adds, squinting at the label. 

Garrus blinks at that.  Most of the human alcohol that’s reached the stars is—not weak stuff, but also not fifty percent alcohol.  “You know they would give you something—not shitty, right?”

Shepard shrugs, gesturing neatly with her glass and leaning an elbow on the table.  Her weapons are propped against the wall in the farthest corner of their alcove with most of his, except for her beloved assault rifle, leaned against her chair like an adoring dog.  With the throat clasp of her armor undone and her gloves and wrist braces discarded on the table, Shepard looks undressed, almost bare, like she never does in her uniform blues on the ship.  When she sips from her glass, more slowly this time, she tips her head back, exposing the delicate scaffold of tendons and the tracks of blood vessels in her fragile human neck, and Garrus realizes as she lowers her head again that he’s been watching the way her muscles work with swallowing.

“Nostalgia value,” she says with the sort of brittle good humor that normally precedes disaster.  “This is the closest thing to the bathtub shit I used to drink as a kid.  And if you want something legal on Earth that’ll mess you up quick, gin’s your best bet.  Short of moonshine.”

Garrus nods along, and watches her take another drink.  There’s a moment of quiet, the two of them drinking and listening to the boom of the music on the other side of the wall and the sealed door.  Less tense than before, Garrus notes, as if just being hidden away for a little while is easing some of that battle-fever in Shepard, but still not easy.  She’s never still, but now Shepard is close, except for the way her fingertips trace around the rim of her glass while it rests on the table, her clear green eyes roving over the door, over the wall, over Garrus, and back again, restless. 

“You know I was part of a gang, right?” Shepard asks at last, abrupt.

“I remember,” Garrus says dryly.  Partly, that’s—not quite common knowledge, but something close.  Shepard’s patience with reporters is better than he thinks anyone has a right to expect, but at the end of the day she’s still a brawler at heart.  The kind of person who looks at a krogan trying to rush her and decides to beat them to death.  At least one person she’s pissed off has pettily broadcast the details of her personal life to the galaxy, but it’s hard to crucify someone who’s single-handedly holding back a tide of destruction.  Partly…  “I had the displeasure of meeting your old friend.”

“Right,” Shepard says distantly.  Her middle finger makes a slow circuit around the lip of her glass.  “The Reds took me in when I was twelve.  I was with them five years.  They protected me, kept me safe.  Taught me to shoot.”

Garrus holds still, very still.  Whatever strange mood Shepard is in now, this sudden lack of equilibrium after Edolus, feels as unpredictable as sand underfoot, sliding and shifting with each step.  She never talks about her past, as if by stepping forward with her usual brash confidence might be enough to leave history behind—Garrus isn’t sure anyone, not even Alenko, has heard her talk about the Tenth Street Reds in any depth. 

Garrus isn’t sure if his stillness is to keep her from spooking into silence, or to keep her from remembering he’s there, for her benefit or for his.

“I was a fucking awful shot,” she goes on, “but a good fighter up close.  Decent strategist.  I thought—they treated me pretty well, all things considered.  When I was fifteen, though, they got caught during a robbery and--” Shepard shakes her head, snorting derisively, and downs the rest of her glass promptly, refilling it as she continues talking.  “They left me behind to get snapped up and interrogated.  I walked on a technicality and went back to the Reds, and spent two years getting my scores up enough to get into the Alliance military academy.  I left and never looked back.”

She falls silent then, and Garrus waits, counting seconds in his head, counting breaths, as if he’s waiting for the perfect shot.  Finally, he lowers his voice until it barely rises over the music and asks, “Why are you telling me this?”

“I thought the Reds gave a damn,” Shepard says simply, her eyes focusing on him.  The ring of pale green is nearly gone in the red light, swallowed up by the gleaming black of her pupils, and her regard feels as heavy as the endless dark of space.  “And then I never thought that again until—until I was a Marine.”  Her voice breaks for the first time since he’s known her, and Shepard hides it with another sip of gin, clears her throat.  “The Alliance Marine Corps kept an old Earth saying for our motto,” she says.  “ _Semper fidelis_.  Always loyal.  My unit, they had my back.  For real.  Even though I was an angry bitch from the streets and spent like…two years always on some kind of punishment duty for mouthing off at my superiors.”  Her eyes close and it’s like a dam giving way, her face twisting into a snarl like something feral is trying to escape, her hands closing into fists, and when her eyes open again, they all but spark with rage.  “And the _Alliance_ ,” she says in a low hiss, “they had _our_ backs.”

Ah.

Garrus leans back a little in his chair, trying to project the right note of calm engagement without making her feel crowded, and takes a moment to be grateful that he hasn’t really been drinking, more than a few mouthfuls.  He’s pretty sure that he’s going to want to be sober for this talk—and by the way Shepard is putting away gin without regard for the consequences, he’s equally sure that someone should be sober in order to get her safely away from civilians after she decides they’re done at the Den.

“Until Akuze,” Garrus says.  He gets a sharp, vicious gesture in return, and Shepard swallows more gin while he considers what to say next.  “We, uh.  We talked about thresher maws, a little, after Xawin.  And—Toombs.” 

“Toombs,” Shepard echoes.  Her voice is still low and ragged, like she’s been running, and it’s beginning to take on a husky note from the alcohol, a faint rasping rumble like an imitation of turian subvocals.  “I should have looked for him.  For all of them.”

It’s more or less all their short conversation about Toombs had been—no details, no alcohol, just Shepard and her calm, merciless self-recrimination.

“You couldn’t have known,” Garrus says again.

Shepard makes a noise like a laugh, and it makes Garrus’ crest bristle a little at how absolutely _cold_ she sounds. 

“Couldn’t I,” she says, soft and just this side of quiet, her voice winding between the heavy drumbeat of the music.  “That was my unit—my family.  They would have done anything for me.  They _died_ for me.  I didn’t have the decency to die with them, and I didn’t even bother to look for them.  And then the Alliance went around hailing me as a grand hero for it.”  She spreads a hand flat on the table like she’s trying to keep it from shaking.  “I _hate_ it,” she says, voice loud again, angry, and she tosses back her third helping of gin before slamming the glass back onto the table so hard that Garrus worries she’s about to break the tumbler and end up with a palm full of shards.  “They wanted to give me a medal, did you know that?  A _medal_ , for courage under fire, because I killed three maws trying to save my commanding officer.  Because I didn’t fucking _die_ like the rest of them.  It’s still on my file.  So is the demerit for refusing to attend the ceremony.”

“Three?”  The question is involuntary.  Garrus has always appreciated the Mako’s armor more than he can say, when Shepard’s avowed bad luck runs them into a thresher maw.  He doesn’t want to think about _three_.  “Shepard—what the fuck _happened_ on Akuze?”

He doesn’t really expect an answer, not really.  He expects anything from a sharp reprimand to a neat redirect, like he’s seen her do before.  Instead, Shepard reaches out and refills her drink, and swallows half before setting it down, and then she says, “We were supposed to be checking on the settlement on Akuze.”

“Shepard--”

“You asked,” she says, and there’s a blade somewhere in those words, but Garrus can’t tell which one of them she’s directing it at.  “The settlement stopped responding to hails.  Just dropped off the radar like it never existed.  So they sent in Marines to check up—it was out on the Alliance rim, anything could have showed up to wreck the place.  No such thing as too paranoid.  There were fifty-one of us, my whole unit plus our CO—this guy Chen, he was a mess in person, but I never saw anyone run a battle sim better.”

“Chen?”

“Commander Chen.  So we got sent in.  All of us armed, plus one heavy gun.  Not a Mako, an older rover model.  It handled even worse, believe it or not.”  Shepard raises her glass back to her lips, and he can see the clear liquid ripple with the tremor in her hand.  “We swept the whole colony, top to bottom, and didn’t even find any blood.  It was like everyone just disappeared into the sand.  So we set up a grid pattern, to try and find—anything.  Survivors, bodies.  We would have taken a set of dog tags.”

Garrus wishes he had something to do with his hands, something more than resting them on the table and not touching his drink.  He’s never seen the appeal in horror vids, but this feels like sitting through one, waiting for the jump scare.  But—he did ask.  And this, reciting what happened in that preternaturally calm tone, seems to be doing something for Shepard.  Whether it’s good or bad might be up for debate, but Garrus sits quietly and listens as her voice goes on.

“We swept six square clicks before the sun started to set.  And then we made camp in the desert, on this broad flat stretch where we could post up fifty-one Marines without trouble,” Shepard says, her eyes focused on something far distant.  “We were asleep, except for the two on watch.  Sigan and Carrero.  They drew the short straw and got put on middle watch, and honestly—honestly the whole fucking planet seemed empty.  We hadn’t seen anything living bigger than a dog since we made landfall.  We all joked about how watch was going to be boring as hell, and then we went to bed—and then they hit us.”

Shepard’s hands are wrapped around her glass, the knuckles pressing white against her skin with the force of her grip, and her pupils are blown wide as she stares at the door across from her, a fixed stare like someone watching a firing squad draw close.  He wants to peel Shepard’s hands off the glass before she really does break it and hurt herself, wants to shake her until she sees him instead of whatever ghosts are putting that pale, grim look on her face.  It takes a moment before she picks up her story again.

“The ground started shaking.  That was what woke most of us up.  Sigan screaming—that got the rest of us.  The first one came through at the southern corner of our camp and sprayed him with acid.  He was dead before I got my gun.  The second one—the second one came up right in the middle of where we’d been sleeping.  Killed four people with its first attack.  I thought Toombs was one of them.  It was….”  She trails off, shaking her head slowly.

“It sounds like a nightmare,” Garrus murmurs.

“It was,” Shepard says distantly.  “There nine of them.  _Nine_.  I’ve never seen so many in one place.  Mostly solitary, you know?  But there were so many of us, and we didn’t know to watch for thresher nests, we weren’t careful.  It must have been like waving a steak in front of them.  We just—we didn’t _know_.”

This time, when Shepard stops, she’s quiet for a long time.

Garrus leans forward, propping his crossed arms on the table, and asks, “How did it end?”

“Chen made it to the heavy gun,” Shepard says.  “The rover.  Some of us had managed to bring one down—sixteen of us ganged up on it, and it still took out almost half that group.  The ones who lived through it were trying to rally the survivors to kill another when the ninth hit us and flipped the rover, with Chen inside.”

“What did you do?”

“We had a rocket launcher,” Shepard says grimly.  “It was—surplus.  Not safe for unarmored use.  I managed to kill the one that flipped the rover—broke five bones in the process, but I got into that goddamned car and hit the jets.  Once it was upright, I tried to cut a path to the main comm unit, the one that linked direct to command.  But when I started shooting--” Shepard’s voice cracks, then, so badly that she has to stop talking and just shakes her head, eyes closed, hair hanging down around her face.  “Forty-nine Marines in less than fifteen minutes,” she says, opening her eyes and raising the glass back to her lips.  Her hands are shaking for real now, visibly, and she lets out a breath through her teeth when she lowers the glass.

“Forty-nine?”  Shepard’s file, and the details of Akuze, are classified.  The number of Marines killed on the surface is not.

“Chen was out cold when I got into the rover.  I killed two more thresher maws with the heavy gun and—and I ran.  No one else was moving.  Some of them were—some of my unit was _melting_.  Some of them were just _gone_ , or there were just—just bits, pieces left over.”  Shepard’s eyes are glittering now, not quite on the edge of tears but on the edge of something wild and desperate, as if she’s moments away from hurling the glass at the wall just to watch it shatter.  “So I took Chen and I killed my way out and I just ran.  I made it up the nearest cliff and triggered the rover’s distress signal, and I tried to keep Chen breathing.”

“He didn’t make it,” Garrus says.

“He didn’t make it,” Shepard confirms quietly.  “I wrecked my right shoulder with the rocket launcher.  My clavicle, humerus, and three ribs were all broken in multiple places from the shock.  I couldn’t do CPR when his heart stopped.  Just about passed out cold when I tried, and we’d used all our medigel in the attack.  He never even woke up.  The nearest Alliance ship was a cruiser, they were commandeered and sent to help us.  They got there an hour after Chen stopped breathing.  Right after dawn.”

There’s nothing to say to that, not really.  No words in the universe are big enough for that horror story.  So instead, Garrus reaches out and pours her another glass of gin, because it’s the closest thing to his hand that’s almost like helping.  Shepard raises the glass to her lips and drains it all in one smooth swallow, and then she scrubs the back of her hand over her mouth and stops.  She sits like that, wrist pressed to her lips and empty glass in hand, head bowed, for a long time.  Garrus can’t tell if she’s crying.

Hesitantly, not entirely sure if she’ll allow it, Garrus reaches out to rest a hand on the arm still on the table.  She doesn’t move, lets him settle his hand on her armor.

“You had every reason to think they were all dead,” he whispers.

“I did,” Shepard mumbles behind her hand.  “I saw—I _saw_ them.  And then I found out that the settlement was mostly alive,” she adds, lowering her hand as she straightens up, fire in her eyes and something like victory on her face.  “The Akuze colonists were _alive_ , there was an attack a few kilometers out of town and they ran to higher ground—flat out abandoned the settlement and prayed that someone would come find them.  Their distress beacon was damaged and never sent out a signal, but we still made it.  The cruiser— _Shenzhou_ —found them when I ordered them to do a flyover of the cliffs.  It was desperate.  Stupid.  But there they were, more than half the settlement, living on rations and sobbing when they saw us.  I made the medic on the ship let me go out to talk to them, so they’d know the Alliance came for them.  And I thought--” The joy crumbles like sand in a fist, and Shepard wilts.  “I thought, oh thank _God_ , we didn’t die for nothing.”

Garrus winces at that, his hand still on Shepard’s arm.  “Shepard…”

“But they did,” Shepard goes on mercilessly.  “They did die for nothing.  Fifty soldiers—good people.  They died for a fucking science experiment, and I’ll bet you anything that those _bastards_ have been killing more soldiers and torturing more people all this time, and I _never fucking knew_.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“That doesn’t make it not my responsibility,” she says, and abandons her glass altogether in favor of the bottle of gin.

Shepard drinks, and Garrus sits there, trying to picture the nightmare.  Nine thresher maws, in the middle of the night, appearing out of an empty desert and a ghost settlement to devastate a quiet camp.

And Shepard, Shepard watching her unit dying all around her and scooping up her gun to come down like the wrath of some divine force on the monsters, Shepard trying to rally her comrades to their feet while they died in the dozens, Shepard seeing her commander under attack and shattering her shoulder as she tried to save his life.  Shepard’s tactician’s brain finally forcing her to turn her back on her own people and run, in the blind hope that she might save just one person from the massacre.  Shepard watching the sun rise with a body cooling beside her.

The thing that comes most easily to him, the thing that he can picture with perfect, helpless clarity: Shepard, clutching her broken arm and stumbling off a shuttle to find the survivors of the settlement and telling them that they were safe, that the Alliance had come for them, that, even though it had cost Shepard the only people who had ever had her back, they were still worth saving. 

Garrus knows without asking that the look on her face today, that raw and bloodied compassion, was learned in that conversation with the colonists.

“Shepard,” he says again, more firmly.  “What those scientists did—Cerberus, whoever—was awful.  But your unit—they still saved those people.  You did everything you could have done.  If you’d taken the time to search for survivors, the maws would have killed you.  Even if you’d survived it, with a broken arm you could never have lifted them into the rover to get out of range.”  Garrus gives her a shake, and she moves so easily, like a puppet with limp strings, that it makes something hurt in the deepest part of his chest.  “Shepard,” he repeats, and then, when that doesn’t make her look at him, “ _Gabriel_.”

She comes back to reality at that, looks up at him in surprise.  “What?”

“If you hadn’t been there,” he says, “those colonists would have died.  Clearly Cerberus was on the planet—they made it to the camp in time to collect survivors.  But they didn’t look for the colonists, and something tells me they probably weren’t planning to, if the alternative was watching their experiment for a while longer.  Without you making that cruiser do a last flyover, they would have _died_ , all right?”

Shepard blinks at him and musters a bit of a faint smile.  “Yeah,” she murmurs.  “Yeah, I know.”

“And after we’re done with Saren,” Garrus says, “after we end this whole damn war, you just point us in the right direction and everyone on Normandy will help you take Cerberus out at the knees, if you want.”

Her smile takes on a bit of a vengeful edge at that.

“Thank you, Garrus,” she says.

“Of course.”  He lets go of her arm and gently pulls the bottle out of her hand, opting to refill her glass and offer it to her instead.  “Might work a little better,” he says.

Shepard nods and takes it.  “You don’t have to sit here and listen to me have a breakdown, you know,” she says before taking a sip.  “Probably not professional as your commanding officer.”

“Probably not,” Garrus agrees.  “Fortunately I’ve never been the model of professionalism myself, so.”  He gestures broadly, trying to convey _here I am_.  Then he hesitates and says, “If you want me to go, though--”

“No,” Shepard says to her glass, so quietly that he could pretend not to hear her over the music if he chose.  “No, I’m—please don’t leave.”

“Okay,” Garrus says, just as quietly.  “Okay.”

Shepard nods, still looking at her glass, and Garrus settles back into his chair. He picks up his glass for the look of the thing and takes a sip, but the brandy tastes ashen, and he sets the glass back down.

Slowly, she tells him about her unit—about the ones she liked and the ones who drove her up the wall, about the way the oldest soldier in the unit, Kit Marron, had watched her sit through orders in a training exercise and call her mock commander an absolute idiot and how Marron had immediately taken her under their wing, about the time the whole lot of them were given leave and pooled their funds to rent a bar for the night.  The stories start out stiff and awkward, and grow fond and sincere as the alcohol hits Shepard’s bloodstream, the kind of thing that draws the occasional laugh out of Garrus and a few smiles out of Shepard.

Shepard finishes the bottle of gin at about the same time that she seems to run out of steam, leaning forward to rest her forehead against her laced fingers.

“I’m so tired,” she murmurs.  “We have to go out and save the galaxy tomorrow and I’m—so tired.”

That ache flares in the deepest part of Garrus’ chest again, like he’s taken a swift and sudden blow to the delicate inner bits of himself.  “I know,” he says.  He wants to say _me too_ , because they’re all so tired, these days, but he can’t, because—what must it be like to have all that weight on your shoulders?  They try to help her, to take some of the burden, but at the end of it all, everyone knows that Shepard carries the brunt of it alone.

“I shouldn’t go back to the ship like this,” Shepard says into her hands.  “This was a terrible idea.”

The wave of relief at having such an achievable problem set before him is almost enough to make Garrus dizzy.

“Don’t worry about it,” Garrus says.  “I’ll deal with it.  Sit tight for a minute.”  He collects the empty bottle of gin and the mostly full bottle of brandy, and slips out of the room to flag down the bartender. 

“Hey, there,” she says, a little startled as he slides both across the bar to her.  “Thanks—damn,” she adds, holding the empty bottle up to the light as if checking for evidence that it’s a fake.  “That’s—a lot of gin.”

Garrus shrugs a little and leans his elbows on the bar.  “I know you don’t charge the commander here,” he says in an undertone.  “But if you do me a favor and keep quiet about it, I’ll tip you twice the cost of that bottle.”

He’s not sure how much the bottle costs—Shepard said it was cheap—but the human woman’s eyes glint and she says, “I’m happy to help.”

“I know my way through the back passages,” Garrus says, “but I need a distraction, if you don’t mind.”  He turns up the charm and takes a moment to thank whoever might be listening that turian subvocals tend to hit humans in roughly the same cognitive way as a purring cat.  “It’s been a long few days and honestly the commander is hoping to make it back to the ship without being accosted, you know?  I figured you might be able to help, just so she can have a little time to herself.”

The bartender smiles, conspiratorial, and says, “Hell, I’d do that for free.  But as long as you’re offering…?”

Garrus laughs a little.  “How much do I owe you?”

Eighty credits later, the bartender and four dancers have successfully drawn every eye in the room, and Shepard and Garrus are able to walk right out the door without a second glance.  He palms open one of the locked side doors that, technically, he’s not allowed to use anymore, since he left C-Sec, and leads Shepard through the Wards to one of the nicer hotels.

“Here,” Garrus says, pleased with himself, as he opens the door to a room and gestures Shepard inside.  “You can stay here overnight and come back to the ship for the morning, and it’ll be fine.  I know the volus who runs this place, she put you under a fake name and no one will bother you.”

Shepard sits down on the edge of the bed, looking a little bemused.  “That, uh. That never occurred to me before.  Normally I just stay on Normandy.”

“Is it all right?”

Shepard smiles at him, and it’s honest and real and warm, the first flare of something like happiness he’s seen from her since they left Edolus.  “Yeah, Garrus,” she says.  “Thank you.”

Garrus wishes, for a moment, that turian faces were half so open and expressive as human faces, so that he could smile back.  Instead, he settles for making an absent chirping noise in the back of his throat and saying, “I’m glad to help.  And Shepard…this goes without saying, but you know I won’t tell anyone what you told me, right?  Not unless you say otherwise.”

“Yeah,” Shepard says.  “I know.  I—really appreciate it.”

That feels like a dismissal, and so Garrus nods, retreating back toward the door with a murmured _sleep well, Shepard_.  Her voice stops him before he can open the door, though, and he turns back to see her beginning to undo the clasps on her armor, peeling it off one piece at a time with perfect ease despite the fact that he can _see_ how drunk she is.  Muscle memory will get a person pretty far, he supposes.

“Garrus,” she says.

“Yes?”

“It’s…nice to feel like people have my back again,” she says without looking at him.  “Thank you for that, too.”

Garrus feels a moment of freefall, like the bottom dropping out from beneath his feet and letting him tumble before a cord anchored somewhere in Shepard catches him.  In between, he comes to a realization with the same serene horror he felt watching Shepard down gin like it was water—he would let this woman lead him into the heart of a star, probably.

“It’s nice to have someone worth following,” he says when his voice works again.  “Anytime.”

 * * *

The next morning, Garrus is idly looking over the galaxy map at oh-seven-forty when the airlock dings politely and the VI announces the return of the commanding officer.  Shepard strides back onto the ship looking as crisp and put-together as ever, not even flinching at the bright shipboard lights, her armor scuffed and battered but perfectly assembled.  There’s a moment of tension before Normandy seems to breathe again, as Shepard calls a greeting to Joker in a light, wry tone and claps Pressley on the back with a word of thanks for keeping an eye on things. 

“So, who’s on board?” Shepard asks the bridge at large.

“Everyone,” Garrus says before Pressley can answer.  “Joker’s been running flight checks for twenty minutes.  We’re ready when you are, commander.”

Shepard shoots him a quick glance and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> I have [a Tumblr,](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/) watch me cuss out the Council in real(ish) time.


End file.
